Long Range Planning For Town Of Oriental

About five years ago, the Town of Oriental's Board of Commissioners established a Long Range Planning Committee. I suggest that it is time to abolish the LRPC. Or, perhaps rename it the Long Running Planning Committee. Or perhaps the Interminable Planning Committee.

It may be time for the Town Board to declare the LRPC victorious and return all of its functions to the Town's Planning Board, to which they properly belong, anyhow.

It has been two and a half years since the original Long Range Planning Committee (of which I was a member) created its Long Range Vision Statement. The Town Board approved it October 9, 2009. A summary of the vision statement is posted on the wall at Town Board meetings. It is fine, as far as it goes. In fact, it is a good basis for planning, though I think it leaves out a thing or two.

What was supposed to happen next is that the town would work from the Vision statement and prepare a Comprehensive Plan.

North Carolina General Statutes stipulate that the town must have a comprehensive plan, but does not spell out exactly what that is. For at least one statutory purpose, the town's Growth Management Map meets the requirement for a Comprehensive Plan.

The effort for a more elaborate Comprehensive Plan has evolved into a kind of search for the Holy Grail of planning.

More than two years ago, Planning Board member Jim Barton made an excellent start to the preparation of a Comprehensive Plan. That effort fell apart for reasons that have never been entirely clear.

What is clear is that recent efforts of the LRPC II have detracted from planning efforts that need to be undertaken. For example, the Town needs to replace its decades-old Thoroughfare Plan (which is certainly a component of the elusive Comprehensive Plan) with a Comprehensive Transportation Plan. The reason is, that a CTP is necessary should the town seek Department of Transportation funding for bicycle paths, pedestrian pathways, etc. It would be best to task the Planning Board with development of a CTP (in conjunction with the DOT transportation planning department) and get on with it.

I think a long range plan without any specific mention of annexation does not meet the planning needs of the town.

What the town doesn't need the LRPC to do is to keep bringing up certain solutions in search of a problem as, for example, "Conditional Zoning" and "Smart Growth." Neither makes any sense without a plan for growth through annexation.

I'll have more to say about Conditional Zoning in the future.